


one day your eternity comes to an end

by leiascully



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Art, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Off-screen Character Death, Painting, Post Episode: s04e08-09 Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 05:16:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/845735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor promised he would paint River.  It's the only way he can keep her with him always.</p>
            </blockquote>





	one day your eternity comes to an end

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Artistic Merit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/842125) by [leiascully](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully). 



> Timeline: post-ATM, pre-NOTD  
> A/N: Though it's not necessary to know the paintings to enjoy the thought of River being painted, [this is a Vermeer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Girl_with_a_Pearl_Earring.jpg), [this is La Grande Odalisque by Ingrès](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_Odalisque), and [this is Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edouard_Manet_024.jpg). The title comes from a quote from _Hiroshima Mon Amour_ , the movie based on the novel by French author Marguerite Duras. This is a very much sadder riff off the story I wrote from hihoplastic's prompt of painting.  
> Disclaimer: _Doctor Who_ and all related characters are the property of Russell T. Davies, Stephen Moffat, and BBC. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

He did paint her later, as close to the style of Vermeer as he could manage. Nothing else came close to capturing the light in her. She was close to the Library. He felt the throb of each second with her, as if every moment that slipped past took a portion of the marrow of his bones until he was hollow, brittle, a shell easily cracked. He reveled in her and mourned her all at once. Meanwhile, she was joyous, smugly beloved, and he lavished her with wonders and delights.

She insisted on posing nude in the open air like Manet's models; he took little convincing. Her skin fit her the best of any costume: River, unadorned, unabashed, unafraid. He wanted to document every inch of her glory, every detail of her body. The TARDIS kept holograms, but they weren't enough. They weren't River. To preserve the essence of her, the feeling of her, every marvelous contradiction of her, he had to use his own hands. 

_The light has to be right,_ she said. _For the integrity of it._ Her eyes danced.

 _Absolutely,_ , he said gravely, and stepped aside, flourishing his hand at the TARDIS controls. They ricocheted through the universe, sampling different illuminations as if they were tasting wine: one too sweet, one too harsh. 

She wore the dress she'd worn in 1969, evaluating the quality of each planet's light by the way her bare shoulders gleamed. He sketched her, holster and all; each rough outline was a study in predatory grace. The ache of each vanished minute was counterbalanced by a bitter hope that their whimsical quest would endure until the end of time. She would never go to the Library. He would never come to Trenzalore. They would chase the perfect light to the ends of the universe and back. But he had sworn not to change one minute. Without the library, she wouldn't be River. Without River, he would be lost. 

_Here_ , she said finally, on a planet with two suns and an endless day. 

_Perfect_ , he told her. 

Time trampled over him as they prepared. He set up his canvas, laid out his brushes, took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves. River slipped out of her dress and the light caressed her skin. She reclined on a chaise longue the TARDIS had produced, regal as a queen. His Odalisque, her diary propped against her hip. 

_Ready, my love?_ she asked.

 _Stay still,_ he said.

He took a long time to sketch her out on the canvas, and longer still to lay down the first layers of paint. As the brush touched the canvas, he felt time stretch, the moment suspended, history left breathless. He would never come closer to temporal grace than this. River gazed at him over her shoulder, paging through her diary now and then to pass the time. 

_Do you remember_ , she would say, and the memory would sweep him up as his hands worked automatically. A thousand adventures. A hundred thousand precious, fleeting moments to savor. A first kiss in the Stormcage. A revelation in his cot. A diamond cliff and a Chinese vase. Broken wrists, broken hearts, and broken promises all repaired, though the damage always showed. And every story reminding him that hers was drawing to a close. No happily ever after for his River: his fault and not his fault. All she could look forward to was a half-life, this woman who had made every moment so intense and rich. 

His hand shook slightly, smearing the paint, and he steadied himself. But how could he bear it, knowing what he knew? How could he not carry her with him to the last? He had nearly broken at Demons Run without her at his side. He could never face Trenzalore without her. She was the very best of him, the greatest part of his strength.

His mind raced, but his hands knew her and needed no guidance. River flowed out from his brush, stroke by stroke. His hands didn't flinch: he painted her just as she was. Their life together had been brilliant and unbearable and he painted all of it. Each layer of paint he laid down was a memory. For every shadow there was a cruel word, a misunderstanding, a moment too late; the light that gleamed in her eyes and her curls and the curve of her hip glowed like the moments of bliss they had shared. 

They were the aggregate of all their sins and all their sacrifices, of every fight and every kiss. The light and the dark belonged together. The one had no context, no meaning without the other, the same way that the stars marked out the distance in the endless black. He couldn't outline the shape of her without showing what wasn't her. He couldn't have Asgard without Berlin. She couldn't have the pyramid without the lake. 

He couldn't imagine who he would have become without River; he couldn't imagine who she might have been without him. Happy, he hoped. Safe, he hoped. But not River Song, and that was beyond comprehension.

He had wanted so badly to save her in the Library. He had wanted to keep her near him after the Byzantium, even as wary as he was of the woman with the laughing eyes and the steady aim. She could save him, he thought, if he could save her: a vain, impossible hope, and the greatest cruelty he could do to her. Unless. Unless. 

It would be worse than murder to take those choices from her. She was the one perfect thing he had left, the one life he hadn't ruined despite what seemed to be his best efforts. To change her future would be to erase her completely, every moment of her agency, every weighty choice she'd made. She would never forgive him. He would never forgive himself. 

He was a selfish, meddling old man. After Rose, after Donna, after the thousand other lives he had casually torn apart, he would not dishonor River, though it would break his hearts and maybe end his life. And he would feel it every day, like the ache of an old fracture before a storm. The storm was coming and he would face it with nothing but the memory of her. It was more than he deserved and less than he desired.

The Doctor stretched his neck and rinsed his brushes. The painting was nearly complete. It wasn't as if he needed her in front of him to finish it. He saw her every time he closed his eyes.

 _Penny for your thoughts, my love,_ she said, her voice soft and husky. 

_Come and see,_ he told her.

She stretched languorously and stood, padding over to him. He draped his jacket around her shoulders as the breeze teased her curls. She studied the painting, saying nothing. He waited, his hearts thudding sharply in his chest. Finally she turned her face up to his. He bent to kiss her, his hands cupping her face, his fingers leaving faint smears of paint across her jaw. Her hands rose to the buttons of his shirt. 

They made love on the chaise longue, slow and tender at first and then urgent. He held her as if his arms could shelter her from time itself. Her hands clutched his shoulders; her mouth trembled against his. He prayed helplessly, hopelessly to the vastness of the universe for one more moment of temporal grace, for the memory of this perfect union of body and soul to endure. Surely some hint of what they had been to each other would resonate through history, like the ruins she loved or the wind-ruffled pages of her diary, closed at last and slipped anonymously between two other books. After the immensity of their love, surely the universe couldn't remain unchanged.

He lay with his head on her chest, listening to the steady beat of her single heart. She stroked his hair. They said nothing; there were no words. The light shone down on them, mutable but neverending. 

When she had gone again, back to the life she had made, he sat in his sling underneath the TARDIS console and wept. When he could cry no more, he made tea and went back to his painting, adding in the small details: the sweep of her lashes, the scar on her shoulder, the hollow at the small of her back.

He hung the painting later, after the Singing Towers, after he had left her at her flat with a kiss. 

_See you around, Doctor Song_ , he had told her.

 _I look forward to it,_ she had said, smiling at him.

He had not been able to stop himself from going back to her, from sweeping her up in his arms, knowing it was the very last time. She murmured, surprised and pleased, and kissed him back, and he swore her mouth could stop clocks. He understood, as he never had, the beacon on the pyramid and the fear in her eyes when he had tried to take her hand. _You are loved, and by no one so much as me._ In that moment, he would have done anything to save her and never counted the price. But the ache in his bones marked the passing of the seconds. The kiss ended. She went back to her books and her students. He went back to the blue box that he had stolen so long ago and the lonely life that had come with it.

He found the painting, still on its easel in the library, and hung in his little-used bedroom, above the photographs of Rose with her hair blowing in her face and Martha in her UNIT uniform and Donna scolding him and Clara with her book and Amy and Rory making tea. River gazed down at him with her expression of loving mischief; he stared at her until his eyes burned and his hearts beat erratically.

 _I can't,_ he told her painted face, the words rough and anguished in the calm of his room. 

_Of course you can,_ she said behind him, and he froze in place. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her as she walked closer, examining the painting. _How sentimental you've gotten, sweetie. One would think you might visit me once in a while if you feel so strongly about it._

He couldn't speak to her. He could only look at the painting: the faint shadow of her spine, the rise of her hip, the contrast of her skin with the blue leather of the chaise longue. He barely dared to breathe. It was sheer and utter torture, to have her so close and to not even look directly at her, but it would be worse to turn and not see her. She was a hallucination or a data ghost or perhaps, as the universe was wide and its wonders numberless, a real ghost, her business with him unfinished. If he spoke to her, it would all be over, the mystery unraveled. Better to spend the rest of his days with a shade than to face the prospect of a life empty of her presence. Now the choice was his, and he would guard her until his own days had counted themselves down. 

He touched the corner of the painting lovingly, making certain that it hung straight and true, and walked out of his room, Orpheus leading his ghostly Eurydice up a path that never ended.


End file.
